On 5th February 2009 Birmingham Conservatoire hosted the 20th Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe Scholarships (YMFE), in which three under-25s studying full-time music at HE-level received awards totalling £6,000 to further their studies and professional careers.

Each year the discipline for the YMFE Scholarships rotates, between piano, brass/woodwind and the disipline every third year itself rotates between voice, percussion and strings. This year was the turn of brass and woodwind and we really felt we were being given a glimpse of some of tomorrow's top professionals, who gave spell-binding recitals on saxophone, trumpet, bass trombone, flute and clarinet.

We would like to thank our distinguished panel of world-class judges, chaired by David Purser (Head of Brass, Birmingham Conservatoire) with Janet Hilton (Head of Woodwind, RCM), Bryan Allen (Head of Brass, RSAMD), Paul Goodey (Head of Wind, Brass & Percussion, RNCM) and John Reynolds (Head of Woodwind, RWCMD).

They selected the three winners and we offer our congratulations to them: Hannah Morgan (clarinet, Royal College of Music), Tom Poulson (trumpet, Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama) and Dominic Childs (saxophone, Royal College of Music).

In 2009 some 37 YMFE scholarships will be awarded in 25 countries, with a total scholarship fund of £56,000. Theses scholarships are in addition to others that Yamaha offers to conservatoire and higher education students in the UK. These top young musicians inspire other young people to become great at what they do in music and we look forward to tracking the careers of this year's young winners with interest. Watch out for them over the next few years - you'll be seeing a lot more of them!